When the Astronauts Came Out to Play
And what a grand play it was — not “play” in the sense of “fooling around getting nothing done”, but “play” as in making one of the biggest plays that humanity could achieve since the discovery that Earth is a planet, the Sun is a star, and we’re all part of a galaxy that wheels the cosmos with other galaxies. That big. Maybe even bigger.
A lot of us who were watching the events unfolding on TV have a lot of happy remembrances of that time. It was a time to look forward to being in space, to establishing careers in space science or as astronauts, astronomers, engineers, and more. Far more than a “plant the flag, pick up a few rocks, and head home” mission that short-sighted and ignorant Apollo detractors since then have sneered about, the mission was a symbolic and scientific first step off Earth to another world. It told us that we can do this thing. And, the memory of that singular accomplishment lives on.
Does it still mean a lot today? I suggest that it does. It reminds us that humans can do great things when we put our minds to it. We can focus on things that aren’t war and hate and bigotry and misogyny and ignorance and religious strife and all the other things that humans do to and think about one another. This is a good day to remember that we are not ignorant savages living by our wits and controlled by fear and hate. We are better than that. If Apollo 11 and its sister missions (including the Soviet-era missions) don’t teach us anything else than this one lesson, they’ll have been worth all the work, expense, sacrifice, and exhiliration. Without any of the successes on the Moon, I seriously doubt that any of the world’s space programs would be what they are today–for they were, at least in part, inspired by the lunar explorations of the 1960s and 70s.
